AMERICAN mouthpiece and South China Morning Post (SCMP) Filipina reporter, Raissa Robles, headlined her March 3, 2025 report, “Philippine ambassador warns defense treaty with US may not be ironclad” basing her story on the statements of US-proxy cum ‘Philippine Ambassador’ to Washington Babe Romualdez’s statements to the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) related to the Trump-Zelenskyy Oval Office tussle last February 28.
Robles writes that “The Philippines must be prepared that its security alliances may not hold in times of crisis, its ambassador to the US has warned, after a clash between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House cast doubts about Washington’s commitment towards its partners.” Robles then quoted Romualdez as saying, “We have to all be ready for that type of situation.”
Romualdez called Trump’s tongue lashing of Zelensky an “opportunity” that “at the end of the day, each country now has to be ready to be able to beef up its defense, beef up its economic security.”
Everything that Romualdez is saying now is the opposite of all that he and his boss, Bongbong Marcos, have been doing and saying these past three years of sucking up to the Americans and singing paeans to our MDT (Mutual Defense Treaty) with the U.S.
Instead of beefing up the Philippines’ economic security, Bongbong Marcos started wrecking the economy in kowtowing to U.S. proxy-war prepping diktats such as the “assertive transparency” of Philippine Coast Guard bait-and-clash strategy against the Chinese Coast Guard ships to dramatize in media, fanning fake spy stories and usher in political oppression of political personalities and bloggers like Sara Duterte, Joie de Vivre, who refused to kowtow to Uncle Sam.
Bongbong Marcos tacitly approved the decoupling of the Philippine economy from the engine of global economic growth that is China, starting with the alienation of Chinese funded vital development projects such as the Luzon Economic Corridor rail, Mindanao, Bicol and North Luzon rails, implementation of anti-Chinese tourist discriminatory visa tightening, among many other anti-China measures that have caused billions of dollars of losses to the economy.
In 2024, Vietnam overtook the Philippines as top banana exporter to China and Cambodia overtook the Philippine in Chinese tourist arrivals.
Despite China’s continuing offer to meet the Philippines “halfway” to resolve contentious issues, the Philippines, under Bongbong Marcos, kept up its anti-China posturing – even leveraging a U.S. Typhon missile system the U.S. installed in the Philippines for a Zelensky-type threat against Chinese territories.
The Philippines, like Ukraine, is being prepared for sacrifice in the altar of U.S. hegemonism. US military “aid” to the Philippines that goes into the pocket of U.S. defense suppliers (and allies like South Korea) is used to train Filipino soldiers only to face slaughter as they fight to the “last Filipino” (like Ukraine now losing 2-million soldiers), and eventually left to die alone when the U.S. abandons the fight, takes the money, and runs. We saw this happen in Vietnam, Afghanistan and now in Ukraine. Often quoted now is Henry Kissinger’s saying, “To be America’s enemy is dangerous, to be America’s friend is fatal.”
U.S. allies become an enemy in the end, as Zelenskyy becomes Trump’s enemy and Putin become Trump’s partner.
Bongbong Marcos, Babes Romualdez et al, be forewarned.